Help with New Grad Decisions

Hi, was fortunate enough to receive offers from Scale AI and Databricks, and I want to know your guys' opinions on these companies. TC and benefits are about the same (for first year at least), and Databricks would be somewhat higher if they were to IPO based on valuation, but rn everything is paper money for both companies.

Databricks (SF)

• larger company (in the mid thousands probably)
• am aware of the team (engine) as a full-stack engineer
• work seems pretty interesting
• great engineering talent, though may be different now with more people
• (arguably) more well known, maybe more likely to IPO?
• interns (I've talked to) all seem to love it and want to go back

Scale AI (SF)

• smaller company (in the low hundreds)
• great engineering talent
• worse (?) WLB
• could potentially move to NYC if I don't like SF after a year (appreciate this since NYC is closer to family)
• more directly AI related (which is pretty hot rn, not sure if good or bad thing)
• demographic skews quite young (all of my interviewers graduated recently)
• have a lot of events in office
• people I've talked to were really, really cool

I feel more inclined towards Databricks mostly because I know the team, the company is more mature (and thus may have a more variety of mentorship and more "stability"), and I've heard overall positive things about it (both online and from people who have worked there). However, I've talked to Scale employees, and they were all pretty cool, and the culture seems to basically be like going to college again with the demographic and how close the new grads are, and AI is pretty "hot" right now. I haven't really spoken to full time Databricks engineers yet, but I'm planning to, and I'm not sure if I want to get swayed by just liking a person I talked to at one company.

I feel like this will ultimately come down to small culture differences and if I want to join a "larger" (still the smallest company I've ever joined) that is more mature or a smaller company that will probably have fewer stops and more freedom and more room to grow. Thanks in advance.

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